


Letters to Love

by MxTigerLily



Category: Kate Daniels - Ilona Andrews
Genre: Long-Distance Relationship, long-distance angst
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-02
Updated: 2020-12-23
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:01:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25026625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MxTigerLily/pseuds/MxTigerLily
Summary: Set after Julie leaves with Erra (Book 10 Magic Triumphs), but before the Ryder Series starts.
Relationships: Derek Gaunt/Julie Olsen
Comments: 10
Kudos: 25





	1. May 20XX

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set after Julie leaves with Erra (Book 10 Magic Triumphs), but before the Ryder Series starts.

A letter. She sent him a letter. Derek inhales deeply, knowing the letter came from too far away to smell like her. Just the faint smell of the mail person and the woods behind the house. Casually, he mixes the letter into the rest of the stack before heading back to the house. Once inside the privacy of home, he sets the stack of bills and junk mail off to the side, and carries the envelope from her into the kitchen. The fading daylight dimly lights the kitchen. He grabs a Blue Moon (heh) from the fridge, bottles clinking softly. The beer and the letter accompany him up the stairs and to his desk. 

Silently opens the beer, taking a few swallows while staring down the plain envelope on the desk. It’s not a big deal. She’s written him before. He sighs, sets down the bottle, here goes nothing, and cracks open the seal on the back. 

Derek holds his breath while he works the letters out of the envelope. It’s never just one letter, but rather a collection of letters that fill the envelope nearly to bursting. The pages are torn out of a rubricated notebook, and folded over in one large packet. He smooths the pages flat, and takes a deep breath. A faint smell of campfire smoke and Peanut cling to the pages, he takes a moment to collect himself. 

Julie could write novels. Or at least, she writes small novels to him every few months. The timing is never consistent, but the distance between towns Post-Shift doesn’t help. Her familiar chicken scratch is jumbled on the page, but still makes his heart skip. Now to read what adventures had she been up to these last few months.

They never close the same, sometimes it’s “Warm wishes”, “May the Moon be bright”, or some parting words in ancient languages that will require some time for him to decipher. Those he carefully copies down on his own paper before pulling down a few of the reference books he had been quietly collecting after the last time he had asked Kate to help translate one of the sign offs. Not that she knew they were letters from Julie, he had copied that one down too, but it was embarrassing as Kate tried to explain what the ancient words meant. Both of them were bright red and a little mortified by the end of it, all he could quite remember is that it was either an uncomfortable come on or a mistranslation. And with Julie, he was never quite certain. That’s why the books. The books were safer. 

The last bunch he looked up seemed to get more familiar and more intimate over time, though some of them he never quite figured out what they intended to mean. It couldn’t be intentional. Maybe she was just running out of sign offs. 

Another swig of the bottle came up empty before Derek remembered to look up. It had gotten dark. How long had he been reading? His stomach growled, demanding the bacon carbonara he had waiting in the fridge. A quick pit stop to the fridge for the leftovers and another beer, Derek resettles at his desk after flicking on the lights.

He hasn’t been able to send Julie his responses, but that hasn’t stopped him from responding. The stack of his responses are folded neatly in the small wooden box in his desk drawer, waiting to eventually be sent to their intended recipient. Another swig and several quick bites into the carbonara before Derek pulls out paper for his most recent batch of responses. He signs them only with his name as no closing seems quite right. Can’t seem too eager. It’s just some letter.


	2. July 20XX

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Julie's turn!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am working on editing, but there still may be mistakes made.
> 
> Also Ella and Carlos are part of Curran's top team. I think Ella is the small woman who talks to animals, and Carlos is the firebug.

The fire cracks and sends a spray of harmless sparks into the night sky. Erra hums quietly to herself while preparing food for the cooking fire. Peanut and Milo, Erra’s horse, snuffle in the grass looking for hidden treasures a small ways away.

Julie positions herself close enough to catch the fire’s light on her notebook, supporting the back of the notebook on her thigh. She takes a quiet deep breath and looks to the stars. She missed him. There were so many new wonders that she had seen recently, wilds that she never knew existed. Beautiful views seared into her mind that she would never forget. And she wanted to share those things with him. The best she could do was write about all of it for him. She had tried drawing in the past, but often felt that it looked like a toddler with a crayon was trying to draw a landscape. 

Okay, that and Erra had caught a glimpse of what she was trying to draw and couldn’t stop laughing. The memory shoved itself into Julie’s thoughts. “I know pictures are supposed to be a thousand words, but yours... well yours leave a lot to be desired,” Erra had shared once she had stopped with the laughter breakdown. But if that’s what Erra thought, Julie cringed to think Derek would have said if he had seen it. She had used it as kindling instead. No one needed to see that. But writing she could do well. And it wasn’t that much different than talking, or at least when writing letters to friends.

Julie didn’t write every night. That’s too often, way too often. And like, Derek doesn’t like her like that anyway. But writing a close friend once a week about your adventures is a reasonable thing to do. She occasionally writes to Sienna too, just not necessarily every time. And if she is being honest with herself, not nearly as many pages. Julie checked with Erra about it too, in a roundabout way, about if it was normal to write your friends frequently. And while perhaps the definition of frequently has changed over time, it is perfectly reasonable to write letters to your friends.

The moon rose while the stew finished. Julie’s writing fills multiple pages with little sign of slowing down. Erra pauses, her eyes narrow as she peers across the fire. 

“Are you writing that boy again?”

“No!” Julie hesitates before mumbling “... maybe.”

“Is this the boy you were pulling thorns out of?”

“They weren’t thorns, they were very thin quills.” Julie wraps up her letter and stuffs everything into her bag, taking a quick pause to pat the metal rose tucked in protective layers of fabric. “He decided to hug a cactus thing to keep Ella from getting hurt from it.”

Erra snorted. “Of course, it was a valiant sacrifice on his part. And you just happened to be the best person for the job of carefully pulling out those *quills* one by one. He wasn’t wearing much from what I saw.” Erra teased, while ladling the stew into their plates.  
This time the memory of Derek nude except for a towel tastefully placed to cover his -ahem- shouldn’t be thinking about that, flowed in front of Julie. He was covered in quills, one hundred and seventeen to be exact. She knew as she had been counting them each time she had braced her fingers around the base of each one before pulling it out. She was never certain if his stillness was because he was in pain during the process, or if she was imagining the fact he stilled as she touched him. His skin was warm and felt strong under her finger tips. Julie shook her head to fling the memory out of her mind, feeling her cheeks flush nonetheless. Calmly ignoring the last part of Erra’s comment. 

“You’re right, he shouldn’t have hugged the cactus creature. Ella is part of Dad’s elite troop, and didn’t need the help. That and Carlos was there too. Hugging it was the worst decision he could have made.”

Erra smirked after passing Julie her stew, Julie’s blush did not go unnoticed, but as a brief kindness to her granddaughter, Erra changed topics. 

“We are nearing the ocean and have the funds to cross it. I think this might be the last city we visit on this side of the ocean.”

Julie decided stuffing her mouth with hot stew was the best thing to stifle her response until she had it organized. Across the ocean! That was the whole goal, to go wake up Erra’s people. But that means she wouldn’t be able to send letters by courier anymore, or at least she wasn’t going to be able to afford it. Which meant that she wouldn’t even be able to send him the letters in packets like she was doing now. And who knows how long they will be across the sea. Grandmother didn’t really know where exactly her people’s temporary tomb was in the modern world. So it would be quite a bit of searching. 

Julie’s panicked pause continued to draw out longer. Erra rolled her eyes, this was just getting ridiculous. “You could also leave them with your grandfather. Until we get back or your mother decides to stop by. She is more likely to as Conlan gets older.” Julie jumps slightly, then suddenly starts choking on her stew. “At least that would mean less to carry. You write a lot my dear.”

The coughing subsides, “Thank you.” Julie returns to poking at her food, her voice shy, “was it that obvious?” 

Erra throws her head back and laughs.


	3. November 20XX

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Back to Derek.
> 
> gfzoda gives the best ideas.

Derek was stumped. The last batch of letters from Julie said that she was over the ocean now. Not that sending mail across the ocean is impossible, but it’s impossible when the intended recipient doesn’t actually know where she is trying to go. It does complicate things. Not that he had sent any responses, but he did intend to, sort of. Just didn’t want to send her more useless things to carry while traveling abroad. He was just going to collect them and then give them to Julie when she returned. 

But, Kate had casually mentioned that she was planning on dropping off some packages for Julie and Erra with Roland. Though she also mentioned it several more times in the same week. Though who knows, Conlan had recently taken to scaling the fridge to get the cookies stored on top, among other things. Both Curran and Kate seemed to be a bit exhausted trying to raise Conlan and run the Guild. So there is a very real chance she just forgot she had mentioned it previously. On four separate occasions.

He stared at the wooden box that he had been filling with letters over the last year. Not many more letters would fit. Well, not without something weighing them down. If he was going to send the useless letters, he might as well send something useful with them. A small gift for the holidays to a friend isn’t a big deal. She had mentioned in the last few letters all the dumb shit she kept doing to her knife. Honestly, he was surprised it still held an edge at all.

A knife isn’t useless. 

He had one custom made for her, though he hadn’t thought to send it anytime soon. Though he hadn’t thought to send anything soon. Derek pressed down the letters in the wooden box again. He could fit the knife here. 

Derek shuffled through some of the boxes in the office closet, sorting through to one closer to the back. The knife looked plain with a leather wrapped handle, sitting in a matching black leather sheath. The only hint that it was something more was the glint of a slender shard yellow topaz in line with the cross-guard. To those without magic sight, it was barely visible, but that was the point. A shard of the Wolf Diamond that Julie had saved him from years ago. Getting the shards from Doolittle was challenging, but eventually he got his hands on two of the shards. Derek was keeping one for himself, but the larger one was embedded in this knife. The jewel would make it easier for Julie to find it, even in darkness. The blade came free with a whisper, the edge keen with a non-reflective coating. After a quick thumbing of the edge, Derek returned the knife to the sheath and set it down on the stack of letters. Perfect.

Okay, maybe it’s missing a letter. Derek paused. Had he actually ever written a letter to her first? 

Julie would understand. Or he could write that letter and then she would. Derek never realized how hard it was to be the first person to write the letter. He tapped his pen on the desk a few times. He could write a short one instead.

~~ “Thought of you and saw a cool rock ~~

No that wasn’t it.

~~ “Heard you might be missing a Cutting Edge ~~

No. Ugh.

~~ “Need a hand? ~~

This sucks. 

“Happy Yule and Merry Christmas.

Derek

P.S. Thought it might glow for you”

Welp. This is good enough.


End file.
